Coral Question

I've set up my tank and have had live rock in the last 2 weeks and all is going well. So I plan on keeping it the way it is for another couple of weeks before stocking it.

I read a post from lampeye about how he set his up and he said that if he was to do it again he'd add corals first. So I've decided to do this.

My question is... is there a limit to the amount of corals I can add at one time?? Is it like adding fish in the way that the load on the biological filter would be too much?

Any answer/advice on this and what corals are good for a young tank would be greatly appreciated..

Cheers,

Simon

Hi simon.
if u go the berlin method there is a flipside to this idea. when my tank was cycled and i added fish first the nitrates went up to about 20ppm. after about a month or two (i think) they were down at zero and have stayed there since. some corals are very sensitive to nitrates so it may in fact be better to add the fish first...hard to say!
cant help you with your question about the corals as i know very little about them. platty252 has a lovely coral tank so he might be able to help. id be interested to see what he thinks about the nitrate thing aswell.
fran

Hi Simon. There will be a lower impact on filtration with corals compared to fish. You will feed most corals a lot less food than fish with the exception of the likes of sun corals that will need direct feeding daily.
There seems to be 101 ways to set up a marine tank and how to stock it.
If it was me and assuming you are going to add a clean up crew first. You will have an algae bloom coming in the next couple of weeks which you should let pass before adding any corals.
Crabs will help with any hair algae and the likes and snails for the diatom algae.
Once this passes I would add most of the corals first. Starting with some of the easier ones like mushroom, star polyps, button polyps etc. Maybe 3-4 corals first and build up the stock from there. Then when it came to the fish make sure they are reef safe, quarantine and gradually add them to the tank.
keep a close eye on your water in the next couple of weeks and keep some prepared salt mix at hand incase of any emergency fluctuations. I experienced some Nitrate swings early on, although i was playing around with different filtration methods so this could have been to blame.

Fran i cant realy comment on the Nitrate with the Berlin method of filtration. I set one up for about a week and once i seen the air accumulating in the sand i chickened out. I also could never see how they can work long term with the fine sand dust and mulm etc. blocking the pores of the rock. Surely the flow trough the rock would die down so much that the nitrate removing bacteria would eventually die off? I know millions world wide use this method, it just wasent for me.

Simon now is a good time to be looking at what fish you want to keep to make sure they dont like to feed on any particular corals you want to keep or vise verse.

Fran you havent seen my tank in a while so here's a quick pic.


Darren.

Thanks for the replies lads,

I am already getting the greenish/brown algae growth, I have a couple of star snails (Astralium Calcar), a turbo snail and a couple of blue legged hermit crabs, 2 feather dusters in the one tube and some mushroom coral on one rock in the tank already, these were hitchhikers on the live rock I bought. they are moving around the tank well and eating this algae up but no quick enough. so a cleaner crew will be bought on my day off.
When I put my rock in my tank first I gave it a couple of days before I did any readings. I've had no ammonia spike, 0 nitrite and 10 ppm nitrate. I checked every 2 days after that and still 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and the nitrate has since gone down to 5ppm and 0 ppm yesterday. Is it possible that my live rock was very good quality and full of life. It was only out of sellers tank maybe 20 mins before it was put into mine. Or am I in for a spike soon??
When it comes to stocking fish, I dont plan on too many, couple of clowns for sure, havent made my mind up on the rest. Maybe 3 or 4 more fish and that'd be it.
I have to say Platy, your tank is amazing. A credit to you. If I could get mine looking anyway as good as that I'd well chuffed. Its beautiful.


Cheers,

Simon

looking good platty ,
monthly i use a small phead to clean the live rock...its amazing all the \"dust\" that comes out from the holes!

The algae bloom will pass soon enough.
Some times when you get live rock there is die off from algae, corals, shrimps etc. This is why you may get a spike shortly after introducing it to you tank. It sound like yours is fine. The bacteria may still be young so you need to monitor it after any new additions. This is why i recomend having some salt mix ready just in case.
If you are going for clown try get tank bred. From what i gather wild clown are prone to white spot. I dont have much experience with marine fish so one of the other members may be able to advise you better than me.
I am not verry good at taking pictures so the pic dose not do the tank any justice. It's a small tank with a big visual impact.
A tank like this i would consider fairly simple to set up and maintain. Water change every 10 days, no skimming and the corals are fed two small feeds and one proper feeding a week. The fish (camera shy) are Damsels ( POMACENTRUS ALLEN ) which stir up the sand constantly helping to feed the corals with zooplankton. I never intended having fish in this tank but i got browned off with people saying wheres the fish? so i added these nasty little buggers that you hardly ever see.

Simon i should point out most literature would recomend a fish only tank or fish only with live rock to start with. But i think if you are going for corals it is best to sort out the aquascape first with the corals instead of banging them in last.
Hopefully someone that has set one up starting with fish first will come along and comment.

@ Fran. I also power head the rocks every week. I just imagine between the Coraline algae and the finer dirt the pores would eventually block up. Is there a time frame as to how long a Berlin set up can last?

not that im aware of darren, iev seen threads where people have tanks running for 8 years. ive also read some people think that the DSB (deepsandbed) gets to a point where it stops working as a dinitrater. one thing of note is that the berlin method relies heavily on strong skimming...(in books anyway!)

thanks for the info Platty, much obliged